Three hour lesbian film wins top honours at Cannes

A three-hour-long film about the love between two young women has won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. The Palme d’Or was awarded to French-language Blue is the Warmest Colour, directed by the Tunisian film-maker, Abdellatif Kechiche.

The runner-up Grand Prix went to one of the most popular films with the critics, the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis, about a struggling folk singer in 1960s New York.

The Japanese film, Like Father Like Son, by Hirokazu Kore-Eda, took the third-placed Jury Prize, as chosen by the panel chaired by Steven Spielberg.

Mexico’s Amat Escalante was voted the best director, for Heli, a story of young love set against the violence of the country’s drug underworld. China’s Jia Zhangke won the best screenplay prize for A Touch of Sin.

The veteran Hollywood star Bruce Dern was named the best actor, as a grumpy father who believes he’s won a million dollars, in Nebraska. Berenice Bejo, who was last in Cannes with The Artist, won the best actress prize, for the Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s first French-language film, The Past.

Anthony Chen, from Singapore, won the Camera d’Or prize for the best first film screening in any of the curated selections at Cannes — for Ilo Ilo, about the affect a Filipina maid has on the family she works for, which was shown as part of Director’s Fortnight. With awards for film-makers from China, Japan and Singapore, South Korea’s Moon Byoung-on rounds off a good year for far eastern cinema, winning the best short film prize, for Safe.